


Hunter

by Ardatli



Series: The Dale Cycle [9]
Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Arthurian-style love triangle, Background Billy/Teddy, Billy still has powers, Crusades!AU, F/M, Fourth Crusade, Outdoor Sex, References to deaths in battle, War is hell, and yet this is not really a smut fic, but no named character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 15:06:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10027208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli
Summary: I just want to hold you, and share with you all of this lifeWith the stars in the darkness, and love in the light, and its dizzying height.Slip the jesses, my love. This hunter you own, from the hood to the glove.When the circling and striking are done and I land, let me come back to your hand.Or, the part of the Crusades AU where Tommy wants to run, Kate won't leave, and battle plans are made.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This piece of the Dale Cycle is inspired by the song Hunter, by folk singer/songwriter Heather Dale. This song, guys. This one. It was the one I kept playing over and over again and seeing Tommy and Kate -- I didn't know how I was going to get them there, or why they were in a medieval AU, but it had to happen. Blame this one for my descent into madness. 
> 
> [Hunter, by Heather Dale](https://youtu.be/bC02SlLBQQw)
> 
> [The Dale Cycle Youtube playlist.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2kdjR4vw6B9Y7nDiAUmCs1lEAzQumVKr)

_I just want to hold you, and share with you all of this life_  
_With the stars in the darkness, and love in the light, and its dizzying height._

**24 June, 1203. The Imperial palace at Chalcedon.**

Thomas was no fighter, and Gregory trusted him about as much as he trusted William not to run at the first opportunity. That put both of them under guard, less overt than it might have been if William wasn’t so obviously under Theodore’s protection, but still there.

Normally Tom would have rebelled against the restrictions, maybe even enough to risk blatant defiance. But when his obedience kept both himself and his brother from having to take arms at Chalcedon, he would stay as ‘put’ as possible.

At least until the battle was over, the Byzantines retreated back to their stronghold at Scutari, and the bodies of the dead were being dragged, still warm, from the red-stained city streets.

One benefit to his brother’s entanglement with a Crusader lord—as ridiculous as the entire damn thing was—was that as a nobleman in Gregory’s retinue, Theodore was assigned one of the suites of rooms in the Chalcedon palace instead of having to pitch a tent in the field like the rest of the rabble. And since he brought Will with him, that meant Thomas got to sleep under a roof, in a bed.

Except that he didn’t want to be here, listening to Will and Theo argue behind the half-opened bedroom door. Or out with the footsoldiers and camp followers swarming through farmers’ fields and filling bags and barrows with sheaves of ripened wheat and barley. He wanted to be a half-league away from here, under the protective boughs of the trees in the glade.

Since the day he’d run scout into Scutari lands, made the choice to stop by the river, only one thing had mattered. Her eyes called to him, and when he slept her voice called his name.

He would dream again tonight, he knew that, only this time his nightmares would be filled with the gurgles of the dying, and her wordless pleas would bubble in blood from her lips. He’d gone back before the battle for Chalcedon, and she hadn’t been there. She’d come later, and seemed unsurprised to find him with his feet in the water, his hair loose around his shoulders.

He’d made love to her then as well, and like walking through a fairie ring, he’d emerged changed from her arms.

It was only fair, after all. William had his illicit love – didn’t Tom deserve one as well?

Though right now his brother and his brother’s lover were barricaded in the bedroom of the suite, leaving Thomas to cool his heels in the antechamber. Even the gold leaf plastered all over the architectural wonder of gleaming marble and columns wasn’t interesting enough to keep his gratitude for their supposed good fortune.

Theo’s voice rose, a rarity for him, and Thomas wasn’t eavesdropping as much as he was utterly unable to get away without leaving the rooms. “I swore my fealty! If I break my vows, I’m hell-bound.”

Will answered, coaxing and cajoling, and Tom could picture the expression on his face. He would be all earnestness and innocence, belying the manipulation that sat so close beneath the surface of everything he did. “You believe that I’m blessed, right?”

“I’ve seen you perform miracles, Will-”

“Then believe me when I say that no God would hold you accountable for forsaking a man doing wrong. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ – and yet Gregory murders without a thought. He takes God’s name in vain, raises himself as an idol – how many more commandments does he have to break before you can break with _him_?”

“It’s not that simple.”

Because nothing ever was. Thomas groaned and sank further into the wooden seat. From here, if he cared to look, he could see through the partly-ajar doorway into the room beyond, see Will on his knees, Theo with his head in his hands, and behind him the stack of armour pieces finally scrubbed clean of Byzantine blood. Traces of sand on the floor in the antechamber were all that was left of the work of the squires with their scouring rags.

“It is! I’m no priest, I can’t absolve you of anything, but fighting for the right side is what will save your soul, Theo – it’s what will save all of us.”

The thing that would have saved them was staying in England and keeping well away from Crusaders, but the idiot decisions of years ago couldn’t be reversed now. Here they sat, in what had been one of the Byzantine imperial palaces, bonfires outside casting eldritch shadows on the walls. Soon there would be another battle, then another, until turning back was impossible and all that was left was to win, or to die.

Tom was rather more taken with the notion of winning.

The stone floors of the palace did nothing to muffle sound, and the approaching footsteps from the hall brought Tom upright in his seat. The fighting from the room behind him had been replaced by careful silence, which meant this would be an extraordinarily bad time for someone to enter unannounced.

So naturally, because the twins’ luck had run out about the same time they’d been forced onto a Venetian warship at swordpoint, the hall door opened. Gregory strode in, his rich velvets an insult to the horrors they’d borne witness to only hours before.

But no; let the nobles celebrate their good luck; let the wineskins be filled and toasts drunk until the floors ran red—this time, with wine.

“Make way, pilgrim,” Gregory commanded, the word a sneer on his tongue. Two of his lackeys filled the door behind him, barrel-chested and drunk on their own importance.

“The Drache is at confession.” He drawled the name out with as much sarcasm as he dared – there were principles greater than him, but not greater than his need to keep his head on his neck. He dared not look back at the bedroom door, or give any sign that he was concerned. All he could do was pray that his idiot brother was paying attention.

Gregory jerked his hand back as though he meant to strike Tom, but let his arm hang in the air a moment longer before dropping it again. “He’ll move for his liege.” And he pushed Tom aside with his forearm rather than the back side of his hand. “Out of my way.”

_Please, Will, be smart._

Good bloody luck.

The door creaked open, and Thomas braced himself for a curse, a drawn sword, a sign that Theodore and William had been compromised. Instead through the open door, he saw Theo slouched, frowning, in a chair, Will in another on the opposite side of the small room, his little psalter open in his lap. They were the very picture of penitent and advisor, and Thomas let out a long, slow breath. Whatever they might have been up to before, there was no evidence of it now. Gregory entered and closed the door behind his group, voices rising in muffed conversation. Tom crept closer, silent and still, and laid his ear against the door.

“Three miles from here to Scutari, the crossing is better there-”

“-Farms along the way are close to harvest, load the ships before we sail.”

“When?”

“Two days, if the wind is good.”

That was both less time than he’d like and more than he’d feared. But he wasn’t the one who needed to know.  

Tom’s original plan had been to drop down off the balcony into the garden below and make his escape into the night that way, but the presence of the Count and two of his loyal dogs made that route impossible. That and Theo would no doubt try and talk him out of it again, his concern written in the furrows of his brow.

Anything but that.

Tom headed out the hallway door instead, slipping on silent feet around the corner, and down the spiralling stone stairs. She would be waiting, tonight of all nights. He could not let her look for him in vain.

\--

The darkness helped; it meant he could not look at the toppled walls, the boulders flung by the great siege engines, the charred thatch and straw in the fields as he sped by. Some night-time bird called low and long, another answered, and the stars glittered cold and unseen above them all.

At first glance the glade was empty, a parted space between the trees crossed only by the river. An ache, as awful as it was holy, opened in the centre of Tom’s chest. A thousand thoughts caught up with him as he stopped running.

_She wasn’t coming._

_He was too late and she’d left, thinking he hadn’t come._

_She had been caught in the fighting after all, and her body lay broken among the grey and purpling dead._

Never that. He would hold a knife to his brother’s throat and order him to turn back time if need be.

She wouldn’t be dead. She was too clever for that. He stood there a few moments longer, turning to watch the edges of the woods, the trees picked out in the wan moonlight. A little while, a long while later, a shadow detached from the darkling gloom, became the shape of a person in a cloak, came closer and became _her_ , her dress kited up above her knees, her arms as they came around him clothed in thick leather.

“Katie, my Kate, I’m here,” he murmured against her hair. Burying his face in it brought not the mixed scents of roses and myrtle like before, but the acrid tang of smoke—smoke and sweat and dust.

“You shouldn’t be.” She grabbed the front of his shirt in her fists and shook him once, twice, then rose up on her toes and pressed her mouth against his, all fierce and sharp. He was the stick caught in her whirlpool, dragged under and drowning, until she released him and he found his feet firmly planted on the ground. She didn’t flinch when he ran his hands along her arms, her ribs, her waist. “I’m not hurt,” she insisted, and drew her hood back to look him eye to eye. That long fall of black hair was braided now and pinned out of the way, her face streaked with soot. “Are you?”

He shook his head. “I’m a hostage for my brother’s good behaviour, not a fighter. Though it won’t be long now before every able-bodied man among us has a sword shoved in his hand. The word comes down to move on Scutari in two days, to push you back across the Bosphorus. They’ll stage the attack on the capital from there.”

“And on that day, you’ll die,” Kate told him sharply, taking his hands in hers. “This won’t end with a simple skirmish and exchange of insults, not anymore. Elijah won’t surrender the field.”

“It’s just about this boy, the prince—once he’s been dropped off with his supporters here, the crusade will keep moving.” Not that he’d ever seen the vaunted Alexius for whom the entire fleet had supposedly been diverted. A favour in return for weapons and food, the nobles said. Get the prince back on his throne and all of the wealth of Byzantium would be theirs in return. What did he care about those kinds of fights? Kate was here and she was real, not the far-off imagined worlds of courts and moving chess pieces.

“You know that’s a lie.” She said it simply, without drama or wailing, and it was all the more true for it. “Your army doesn’t mean to leave any of us alive, and Constantinople will not let a usurper’s troops enter the city. You have to do something. Convince the crusade to turn back, or we’ll all be killed.”

Tom stared down at their hands, his bare and hers gloved, the memory of the taste of her skin fresh on his lips. “I’ve done little to endear myself to my keepers.” William was another story. “But my brother has the ear of the man they call _der Drache_. A knight with a following. He could be convinced, if enough of them follow him-” The plan began to form in the back of his mind, but another superceded it even more quickly.

“But even that won’t be enough to turn the tides of battle in your favour.” He pulled her close against his chest and kissed her again, the fear turning to hunger and the hunger to need, an ache deep in the core of his being that only she could ever answer, from now until the stars themselves fell.

“Come with me,” he blurted out, his thoughts half-formed and nebulous even as they became words. “We’ll run, farther away than they will ever go to find us. We can leave now, take William and the _Drache_ and his retinue. We’ll ride away from this damned place, where you’ve never been happy. I’ll take you back to the west, to the marble plazas of Venice and the orchards of Galicia.”

She made a soft noise that sounded like yearning, and he cupped her face between his palms, brushed the strands of black hair from her eyes.

“You hate this place,” he pleaded his case, her eyes dark mysteries in night’s shadow. “Trapped in that palace like a hawk in the mews, tied down by duty and by vows your father made _for_ you. When do you have your turn, Kate? When do you get to fly free?”

“I have the freedom I need. No-one ties me down,” she argued, but her words were flat and her tone unconvincing.

 “Come with me. We’ll ride the forest trails and buy spices and silks in the markets, sleep the nights in fields beneath the stars, or in feather beds. And when you say turn, we’ll take a new path and explore it to the edges of the world. Be my lady and my love,” he pleaded, dropping his hands to encircle her waist and pull her against his body. “Leave all of this death behind. And I’ll be yours until the end of time.”

For a moment, he could _feel_ her teetering on the verge of saying yes. She was his, wholly and entirely, her lips parted and waiting for him, her body moulding against his.

A bird called in the night, and she stiffened. He knew even before she spoke again, he had lost.

“Running solves nothing. You should know that by now; what has your freedom won you, except a likely end exactly like mine? I’m married to Eli. My life—and death—belong to Scutari.”

“Your father made your promises in your name, and your husband only loves his fantasy of you. You owe them nothing!”

Her head came up, her jaw set. “Them, no. But this land is mine, and has been mine for eight years. The people who live here, the lives I pledged to protect—they look to me, Tom. And I may not be the mother of an heir, but I can still be the guardian they need me to be.” Her words never faltered, her voice stayed steady, her body taut as a bowstring beneath his hands.

“But not right now.” His own voice came out rougher than it should, for what did he care? Guardian of the land—she was as cracked as Theo and his constant banging on about vows and honour. All that got you was dead. “For a few minutes more, for the last time, just be my Kate.”

Her answer was in her lips on his, her hands pulling at his belt, the heat that blazed between them in the sultry windless night. He stumbled forward and they pressed up against a tree, one of the vast-trunked ancients of the woods.

Tom scooped her up, his hands linked beneath her seat, and pressed her there against the tree. Her legs wrapped around his hips and her hands tangled in his hair. He slipped his tongue between her lips and her mouth was fire, and that heat matched itself in the rush of blood through his body. The familiar, delicious ache settled in his groin and he hardened, rocking his hips to press against her and soothe the edge of the burn.

Kate kissed him and broke free, trailing her mouth down the side of his throat, laying kisses and bites wherever she could reach. Her teeth nipped against the skin beneath his ear, sharp points of pain that surged through him as if it were her mouth on his prick again- and oh God, that memory brought a new wave of lust that made him dizzy.

 _There had been fear then as well—she had to have noticed, she couldn’t_ not _know that he was different—but she’d said nothing. And then she’d made love to him as if he were everything she wanted, not a wandering, heretic Jew with no fortune to call his own. If he hadn’t loved her before, that had been the moment when everything had changed._

He needed her, her body under his hands, the softness of her skin against his, to push inside her and feel her take him in, fierce and wet and tight all around.

He balanced her against the trunk with one hand and found the hem of her tunic with the other. She had nothing beneath but her shift, the linen gossamer-fine like silk around his hand. Her thigh was thick and muscled from riding, bare for his touch, then her buttock, rounded curves and moving against his hand. He slipped his fingers sideways, brushed against the nest of curls there and found her slick and ready for him, so much so that she groaned aloud and ground down against him, her fingers digging into his hair, her nails against his scalp.

But if this was going to be the last time, then he could hold out a little longer, despite the screams from his body, the throbbing ache in his hard prick, the wriggles of her hips making friction that was not enough, could never be enough, and that itself was _enough_.

“Katie, please,” her name came out half-plea and half-sob, his breath catching halfway through. Up again, past the slim line of her waist until he could cup her breast, small and perfect. She arched, her hips riding against his and her head tipped back. He could see through the fabric and the dark but he felt her nipple tightening against his fingers, and when he took it in his mouth the silk of her tunic dampened and she cried out again.

“If you’re going to fuck me, do it.” It should have sounded like begging but it was an order, one of her arms holding tight around his shoulder while the other found its way beneath his tunic and to the linen folds of his braes.

He was lost, was lost and would be lost forever, under the feel of her hand wrapped in the slick, soft leather of her glove closing around the thick weight of his prick. Every sensation he’d ever known and could never name folded into that space between their bodies, the leather on his cock, the hand inside, stroking and slicking him up with his own pre-come.

“If you’re going to order me around, I might change my mind,” he lied, and she laughed. Her laughter filled him as he filled her, his prick pressing into her, her body opening around him and drawing him inside. “Katherine,” he groaned against her mouth, a benediction and a prayer.

She buried her face in his shoulder, her teeth against his skin, her breasts firm against his chest, their tumbled clothes a shield between their hearts. The world dropped away beneath him and he was soaring, reeling with the need to mark her as his forever.

Her nails stung his scalp, his neck, she moved against him faster and harder, her legs clamped tight around his waist. He gripped her buttocks in his hands, drew her closer still, moved with her until she arched, tightened and cried out, a wild animal noise in the dark of the night.

Pleasure swamped him, crashed over and drowned him, and for a moment in time he had that brilliant glimpse of a life that could have been.

The light behind his eyes faded, the bursts of lightning through his veins subsided, replaced with the glow of contentment that would, as always, be far too short and never enough. He kissed her with desperation he knew she would feel, trying to hold on to that sensation of well-being that even now was beginning to fade up and down his spine.

“Kate,” he murmured again, softer now, his face buried in her hair and searching for the scent of roses. She clung to him until he softened inside her and his knees trembled. And then they were only two small people, starting to stick together in the forest in the middle of the night.

He set her down and she swiped at her face, but not fast enough to hide the track of a tear through the soot on her face, picked out by the moonlight that shone down on them in the glade. Silent now she rearranged her clothing and he retied his braes, the words not coming to his lips the way he would have wanted them to. Tom seized her by the upper arms again, kissed her deeply, tried to flood her with all the things he couldn’t say and she wouldn’t hear.

Then they were three, another presence sliding in to their sanctum among the trees.

“Who goes,” he put his arm between Kate and the cloaked and hooded newcomer, his knife in his hand. It wouldn’t do much if the attacker had a sword, but he could at least buy time with his blood for Kate to escape.

“My Lady,” the woman’s voice said, and as she approached, Tom made out the sheen of armour beneath the clock, the hint of dark curls around her face. She stared at Tom with a look of disdain and such disapproval that he automatically liked her. He smiled. She didn’t. “It’s time to go.”

Kate nodded. She drew her hood back up over her hair, and she was no longer his Kate. “Be careful,” she said quietly. “Stay away from the roads.”

“I will.” She turned to go, falling in step beside her guard—for who else would that be, come to collect her without spearing Tom on sight. “Wait!” he called, and they stopped. Kate turned, the edge of her face visible beneath the dark wool.

“I can’t-”

“I know.” He drew in a ragged breath to finish his original thought. “But in two days time—be careful. My brother will be forced to fight. He’s a seer. He brought the lightning down on Chalcedon, he’ll do the same at Scutari. Unless you can stop them, or we can get away.”

Now her guard was looking at him with keen interest, her hand dropping to the hilt of her sword. He didn’t feel a threat, but a surge of hope.

Kate didn’t hesitate before replying. “Then get away. Bring the lightning to us.”

“... there may be hope. If we ride to you, it will be under the banner of the dragon, green and gold.” He made his pledge, reckless and bold, already running the possibilities through in his mind. Will had laid the groundwork already—but if they did not run, if they switched sides instead! Then Theo’s honour could be healed, and Gregory, Montferrat, and Blois could choke on their own blood.

“Green and gold. Bring us men and arms and you’ll have safe passage, for as long as I’m alive.” Not ‘as long as Scutari holds,’ but it was a better offer than anything Gregory or the leaders of the Crusade had put forth.

And if some part of this ended with Kate’s archers putting arrows through Count Gregory, the entire business would be worthwhile.

Thomas turned and he ran. The terrain vanished beneath his feet, the miles eaten by the pounding of his heart and the tiny rainfall of the sands through an hourglass. He ran past the fields of grain and the tent city, the hastily-built lean-tos in the palace gardens where young Arnould and the rest of the squires bedded down.

_He would take them as well—even when the world was crumbling around him, he would not leave children in enemy hands._

He had two days to change the world.

\--

_Slip the jesses, my love. This hunter you own, from the hood to the glove._  
_When the circling and striking are done and I land, let me come back to your hand._

**Author's Note:**

> FROM HERE ON IN, ‘major character death’ and angst warnings will apply. I’ll tag each story with more specifics, but only one of the remaining sequential stories will actually be safe (“For Guinevere”) if you don’t want to deal with that. 
> 
> If you’re bowing out now, do come back next for “For Guinevere” (Billy/Teddy schmoop), and “Fortune (An Alternate Ending).” 
> 
> For the rest of you, see you on the pain side.
> 
> Notes:
> 
> All details on the movements of the Crusade are taken from 'Memoirs or Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade and the Conquest of Constantinople' by Geoffrey de Villehardouin. I've modified events as necessary to fit the needs of plot, but the general thrust of things is as close to the chronicle as possible within that framework. 
> 
> Officially, chroniclers of the fourth crusade describe the fields of Chalcedon as being full of ‘ripe corn’ – by this, of course, they don’t mean maize, which is a new world crop. ‘Corn’ at this stage referred to any seed-bearing grain, and tended to be used to refer to the one which was most prominent in the chronicler’s experience (so it could mean wheat, barley, rye, or oats, depending on the writer’s vernacular.) 
> 
> The Byzantines were wildly fond of perfumes, in oils waxes and balms, had a wide variety, and used them extensively, for health, for pleasure and for spiritual balance. http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/what-did-the-byzantine-empire-smell-like/


End file.
